Woodworking

This is a beautiful piece of furniture. I made a workbench.

The beauty of this bench is such that I would be afraid to use it. It is that darn beautiful.

My bench is 60″ by 27″ by 34.5″ It was made from construction lumber, 2x10s, 2x4s, and 4x4s. Now that it is done, I don’t know that I can move it. It is that heavy. I might have to get retractable wheels for it.

This is the basic starting tool for woodworking. Until you have a chance to work on a real workbench, designed for hand tools, you don’t understand just how much of a tool it is.

For years, my goto woodworking bench was a sheet of 3/4″ plywood over a frame of 2x4s. It was stable enough, but it wasn’t really usable for planing.

There are several things that hand woodworkers do constantly. We saw boards either ripping, resawing, or crosscutting. Cutting tenons is an example of both. We drive chisels into wood and dig out mortises. We make boards flat and straight by planing.

If you swing a mallet and hit something and your mallet bounces, that is wasted energy. A solid workbench doesn’t bounce; it acts perfectly with the mallet, allowing hard strikes or controlled strikes.

If you are planing you need the work to stay in place. If you have your work attached to a flimsy work surface, every time you take a cut, the work and work surface move, stealing work. If you brace your foot against your work surface, you are unlikely to be in the correct position for planing.

If you are sawing, you want the work at the height at the correct angles.

Adding a leg vise to the bench will make it even better. That is happening over the coming days.

I’ll be drilling some holes for bench dogs and other work-holding tools.

So here is the astonishing thing: I had a round item on the workbench, I was planing a test piece. That round item did not move.

The number of times I’ve had things fall off a table because it is wiggling…

I’m excited.

Conclusion

The next steps are to make and attach a leg vise to the table. After that is adding some blocks to the underside of the table where I’ll be drilling 3/4″ holes for the work-holding thing.

There are two projects that come next: a journeyman tote to carry my tools and a 6-board chest for Ally for use at events.

After that is a knockdown cabinet with shelves for Ally to use at events.

Side Note

I was picking up some stair treads at Home Depot on Tuesday. As we were checking out we noticed a sale on the Husky 5-tier tote storage rack. The totes are 27 gallons with the nice flexible plastic. Each rack holds 8 totes by their upper edges and two more can be placed on top for a total of 10 totes.

The totes were on sale for $8 apiece. The rack was $149.

If you are looking for more storage, this might be the right thing for you.

For lack of a nail and all of those things. Never a truer statement was made.

I have three workbenches in the shop. One is filled with machining detritus. It always needs to be cleaned up. The second currently is full with a mini-mill and storage containers that are waiting to be placed on the wall. The third is the grinding station with two bench grinders. One wheel is accessible because have the bench is blocked by wood that is waiting for a home.

Moreover, none of these workbenches are set up to be used for wood working. There is a copper jawed vise on the machining workbench. That workbench is a 24-inch by 96 sheet of 3/8 inch plywood atop a pair of 2x4s resting on a pair of folding saw horses.

If I bang on it, everything on the table jumps.

The mini workbench is stable enough, but it is set up for electronics work, doesn’t yet have good lighting, It is only 60-inches long, no vise and no room for working on longer boards.

The third is in a corner with no real access.

Thus, the new workbench.

Joinery

I’m sure this could be knocked together in a couple of days, but that’s not me.

For the first trestle, I did knock it together. Construction adhesive and good old fashion screws. It was strong enough, but not pretty, and I can see my errors today.

The end apron, a piece of 2×10 by 24 inches cupped. I didn’t understand what this really meant when I put that apron on.

The difference between knowledge and skill.

It took me almost two weeks to get the braces cut. Some of that was plain stupid choices in my past. I didn’t have a saw that would for cutting the tenons.

Mostly, it was lack of skill and rain.

I’ve gathered more knowledge and a bit more skill.

To get good joints, you need to have flat, smooth, square connections. I didn’t have that.

Smoothing

I’ve located some 5 wood planes so far. I knew of 2 of them, I suspected 1 more. I found 3 more after that. I also picked up 3 planes for a few dollars each, used.

That’s a total of 8 planes. Two block planes, Four #4 style planes. One #5 plane. One jointer, I think it is a #8 or #9.

One of the #4s is a piece of junk. It is stamped steel for the frog. Even after spending a couple of hours working on it, it doesn’t cut worth a damn. The second #4 isn’t ready yet. It has so much paint and gunk on the sole, that I haven’t gotten it ready yet. The third is a new Stanley #4. I’ve not checked it out yet.

That leaves one, #4. It is an older Stanley with a slightly cupped sole, but I have it mostly tuned, and it is doing its job of smoothing.

I realized that the #5, jack plane, hadn’t been checked since I purchased it 30 years ago. It needed sharpening, but is now doing a fine job.

Those two and a block plane I was playing with are all work ready.

This gets me smooth boards.

Flat

A smooth board is one that doesn’t have any roughness, but it might not be straight nor flat.

To make it flat, you need to test for flatness with a straight edge. Using an expensive Starrett combination square for woodworking messes with my head. I have multiple combination squares, but this one is my nicest.

You can have a board that is very smooth, but which undulates the length of the board. A longer plane, like a jack plane, will help with that, but ultimately, you need to locate those undulations with your straight edge.

After making sure your board is smooth, you set to work with your straight edge to find and mark all the high spots.

Knocking down the high spots will make the board flat. Using a longer plane will help isolate where you are cutting to just high spots.

The problem is that the longer the plane, the more work it is to use. They get heavy and that means more work. They also don’t cut as fast because they can only shave the high spots in that longer distance.

I am to the point where I can do this. I have the skill to make a board smooth and to remove the high spots.

This leaves the board with one more potential issue, twist.

Twist

Just because your board is smooth and flat in a local area does not mean it is flat over a longer distance.

This requires a different tool to measure.

The winding sticks.

Winding sticks are two sticks that can stand on edge, have tops that have the same angle relative to their bottoms.

Think of them as thick rulers that can be easily balanced on edge.

The sticks are placed near the ends of the board, across the board.

You then lower your eye, watching for the far stick to disappear behind the near stick.

If the sticks are parallels, then the far stick should disappear at once. If there is any twist, one end will disappear before the other.

That indicates that the other side is high, relative to the near stick.

This tells you where to remove wood to remove the twist.

As long as the sticks have the same angle, relative to their bases, then this works great.

So I need winding sticks to finish prepping my apron boards.

Making Winding Sticks

Simple, plane one face of a 4×1 by 16 inches smooth. Make it flat, ignore minor twist. I.e., get it as flat as you can without winding sticks.

Now hold the board on its edge and plane the other edge smooth and square to the major face. Then flip it over and do the same for the other edge.

You require a square to make sure that the edge is perpendicular to the face.

This requires holding the board on edge. Except I don’t have a vise to clamp the board on edge.

We’ll assume I can solve that with a wedge board, later.

Once you have both edges square to the face, use your marking gauge (you do have a marking gauge? If not, stop now and make one.) to find the narrowest part of the board. Use that to strike a line (another skill) from one end to the other.

Now plane the board to that line. When you are done, if you have done everything well, you will have two smooth edges, square to the face, and parallel to each other.

At this point, use your marking gauge to find the center of the board. You can do this by eye, actually. Still another skill.

Stroke a line down the center, carry it to the back of the board, maintaining your registration on the same reference edge.

Now rip the board into two equal, or nearly equal, halves. Still another skill I have to learn.

That’s where my bandsaw comes into play. That is what I will use instead of a hand saw. I don’t have the vise to rip safely and easily.

Find the narrowest part of both boards with your marking gauge. Strike that line. Plane down to the line.

When done, you will have two boards that should be the same. You can joint them to make sure, this is the best thing to do.

If you joint them, make sure you mark the matching ends so that you can easily find them again.

You now have your winding sticks. To make it a bit better, darken the top edge of one of the sticks, to create contrast when you are using them.

Notch Board

Another tool. Find a 1×6 about 12 inches long. Find the center and mark a point 4 inches from one end at that center.

Drop lines from a point 1 inch in from the edges to the center marked point.

Now drill a 1/4 inch hole at the center point.

Rip cut from the end to the hole. This will create a V notch, 3.5 inches wide at the mouth and just a 1/4 wide at the throat.

You can now attach this V notch board to the surface of your workbench near the left end, or in my case, one of my apron boards, with the notch facing the center of the board.

You can now place almost any board, on edge, and jam it into that notch. The notch will hold the board upright, on edge.

Now just plane to the lines.

Conclusion

I’m having a blast turning knowledge into skills. This is my daily exercise. I figure that by the end of today, I should have the second trestle completed.

While the adhesive is drying, I will plane the two apron boards smooth and flat, ready to be attached to the legs, which I have already planed smooth and flat.

Maybe I’ll have something good to report by Friday.

My father was a woodworker. He made beautiful furniture. I have a couple of pieces he made.

His primary tool was the radial arm saw. He also had a hand drill. Everything else he did by hand. I wish I had learned more from him.

I think it was one of his quiet hobbies. Later, he became obsessed with model railroads, doing incredible things with them. He is actually published for his work on model railroading.

His skills didn’t seem to pass to me. It is/was so bad that I didn’t do woodworking until I had power tools and a place for them.

One of the basic tasks of wood working is sawing. This is rather simple. Move the saw back and forth in a straight line.

Yeah, not so much.

You have to cut a straight line, without a curve in it. That straight line must be in the correct place. It must not be tilted.

I think 3 degrees of freedom in that sawing.

So how the heck do you saw something correctly? And what the heck do you do when you have to “rip” a piece of wood that is 6 foot long? Or even harder, resaw something that is 6 foot long?

You start with the correct tools. With saws, there are a lot of them. But the real starting point is the marking gauge.

Instead of just marking the line you are cutting, you mark the sides as well. This will give you a visual of where you are supposed to be cutting.

Next, put your pencil aside. Use a marking knife instead. First, it gives a cleaner mark. Second, it is easier to transfer a knife line around a corner.

If you are working on light wood, you can then use that pencil to make that knife mark easier to see.

Finally, for precision work, make a knife wall. This is an artificial kerf. It makes a physical stop for the edge of your saw blade. Now, when you start sawing, your saw is already in a kerf. If you carry the knife wall down the sides, it will help to keep your saw properly aligned.

So that marking knife, a good combination square or try square, a metal ruler, and a good bench chisel are required.

The next thing to look at is the types of saws that are available, and what they are used for.

There are more than you can shake two sticks at. And each saw does a different task.

I’m going to focus on straight cuts and ignore Japanese pull saws.

Saws can be cross-cut, rip cut, or a combination cut. A combination cut saw does a poor job of both ripping and cross-cutting. But it can be handy when you don’t know which you will need.

Cross-cut blades are designed to cut across the wood fibers. Rip saws are for cutting with the fibers.

Normally, we want cross-cuts to be smooth. Smooth means more teeth per inch. More teeth per inch means smaller gullets. Smaller gullets mean slower cutting.

If we have two saws with the same level of sharpness, assume “very” sharp. The one with fewer teeth per inch will cut faster. The reason is the gullets.

The gullet is the space between the teeth. When you are pushing a saw forward, each tooth is cutting a small shaving from the wood.

That shaving has no place to go. It has to travel with the saw blade as it moves forward. The only place it can travel is in the gullet.

As the blade exits the wood, the wood that is traveling in the gullet drops free.

When enough wood dust/chips have built up in the gullet, the tooth can no longer cut and collect more wood shavings.

With fewer teeth, there is less room for wood shavings. The gullets fill up faster and the saw stops cutting.

There is so much more to this. I thought I had a better understanding.

In trying to explain it in this article, I figured out that I didn’t know enough.

Many years ago, I started to build a laminated wood workbench from hard maple. It was very slow-going. I think I have what I finished up in the rafters of the shop.

It is only 9 inches wide. It is not smooth, it is not flat. It is unlikely to be straight, and it is not square.

At the time, I did not have a place to use as a shop. We were living in a rental town house. All the work I did was done on saw horses in the kitchen with hand tools. I had purchased two very nice iron planes to use. But, I did not know how to tune them. I did not know how to use them.

In short, I lacked both skill and knowledge.

You can have something that is very smooth, but it might not be flat. You can have something be flat, but not smooth. You can have something that is flat and smooth, but not square. All three are needed to have a good face.

As a piece of wood comes off the saw, it has rough surfaces. The surfaces are mostly flat and square, but you can’t trust that until it is measured.

A piece of wood can also be cupped. This is when the center is higher than the edges. The board can also be twisted. All of these can be removed with a hand plane.

You start by examining the board and placing the cup up. This creates a stable surface. Looking down the board, you search for any high spots, end to end. These get your attention first.

Using a ‘fore plane, you remove those high spots. You then use a jack plane to make a flat surface that is also smooth.

Now that your board is flat and smooth, you use winding sticks to find any twist in the board. You plane that out.

Finally, you have a good face. Mark it, then move to an edge. Make it flat and smooth. Use a try square or a known good square to make sure your edge is square.

In the end, you will have two faces that are flat, smooth, and square to each other.

Moving on to the other sides becomes much easier.

Planes

I started with two planes from that failed project of years ago. One is a No 5 jack plane and the other is a joiner or try plane, I don’t remember which. I haven’t gotten tot hat stage yet.

What I didn’t have were smoothing or scrub planes.

Via YouTube recommendation, I found one that looked nice on e-bay, was a No 4 smoothing plane, and looked ready to go.

Friday, before I started work on the truck, I stopped in at the second hand store. I found four planes. One without any hardware or iron, one had an asking price of $175, and two that were only $6.

They followed me home.

Yesterday, I had the eBay one arrive. I went to test it, and it wasn’t ready to use.

Taking it apart, I realized the iron needed to be sharpened. About 30 minutes on the diamond plate and the back was mostly flat, again. The chip breaker also had its edge cleaned and straightened.

Then it was time to sharpen the iron. Using a 25° guide, I started working on it.

The bright was at the heel of the bevel. Looking at the bevel more closely, it was more of a half moon shape than flat.

This iron had been badly sharpened many times.

Today, I was able to get my slow speed grinder running with the correct jig for a plane iron. That iron now has a beautiful edge. It needs some hand work, but it is almost ready to go. Testing it shows reasonable shavings, before the hand work.

The first $6 plane needs to have the edge reworked. There is a chip out of it. I’ve not started that process yet. Nor have I looked at the iron of the other thrift shop plane.

Regardless, I will have my smoothing plane and scrub planes in the coming days. Good news for me!

A scrub plane is a smoothing plane with a rounded cutting edge. It is designed to remove bulk material rapidly.